Back on Wednesday, Pope Francis gave a particularly passionate and energetic sermon that got a lot of notice:Turning to the Letter to the Romans, the Pope then affirmed that this feast is a “feast of unity.” He underlined the fact that all are invited, “the good and the bad.” And the first to be invited are the marginalized:The Church is not the Church only for good people. Do we want to describe who belongs to the Church, to this feast? The sinners. All of us sinners are invited. At this … [Read more...]

One aspect of fallen human nature is that we, in a weirdly paradoxical way, tend to become precisely what it is we do not like. Saint Paul decried this tendency in himself, "I do not understand myself; all that I hate I am become" (Romans 7:15).In attempting to walk with people who still processing our new pope and trying to understand him, or trying to understand themselves and what matters within the depths, I've had a lot of time to ponder that line of scripture. It is so easy for those … [Read more...]